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Clinic demonstrations, podcasts, and TV shows: Hristio Boytchev reveals how an ambitious deal between a leading medical education provider and the tobacco industry collapsed this week
The medical education provider Medscape has bowed to pressure and agreed to permanently remove a series of accredited medical education courses on smoking cessation funded by the tobacco industry giant Philip Morris International (PMI), The BMJ and The Examination have found. Medscape has acknowledged its “misjudgment” in a letter to complainants and says that it will not accept funding from any organisation affiliated with the tobacco industry in the future.
The move comes after a BMJ investigation revealed the PMI deal and widespread protests among doctors and academics in reaction to the partnership. Critics had said that the content tended to portray non-cigarette nicotine products as relatively harmless, therefore aligning with the commercial interests of PMI, which also sells e-cigarettes, nic
A leading medical information company has been urged to cancel a series of new education courses on smoking cessation funded by the tobacco industry giant Philip Morris International (PMI).
Physicians and academics have rounded on Medscape for partnering with PMI on five courses launched in the past few months, and they have called for stricter oversight by certification bodies.
Anna Gilmore, professor of public health and director of the Tobacco Control Research Group at the University of Bath, UK, said that Medscape had “now lost all credibility and has some serious questions to answer. PMI lost all credibility decades ago, despite its ceaseless and highly misleading attempts to rehabilitate its image. It has now sunk to a new low.”
Medscape has temporarily taken down some of the courses while it carries out a review, but it told The BMJ that it had so far “found no evidence of deviation from Medscape’s strict quality and integrity standards.”
The outcry centres on the
A long-awaited federal ban on menthol cigarettes and cigars remains in limbo, after the White House delayed finalizing a proposed rule until at least this month.